


i thought i’d never find you (when suddenly i saw you)

by angejolras



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, hi hello it's me again, so enjoy!, this is a little rough in terms of pacing but overall i quite like how it turned out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-25 07:27:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20372968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angejolras/pseuds/angejolras
Summary: The universe makes a lot of mistakes, but sometimes, Éponine thinks, sometimes the universe gets it right.





	i thought i’d never find you (when suddenly i saw you)

**Author's Note:**

> heyo, thanks for clicking, i do hope you read this through to the end! that'd be much appreciated ❤️
> 
> just to make things a little clearer: this is an ENJONINE fic, but there's some one-sided marius/éponine, super brief eposette, and a mention of montponine. but don't worry, those all go by pretty quickly :P
> 
> i mentioned it in the tags, but again, i apologise for the somewhat rough pacing
> 
> side ships are marius/cosette, jehan/grantaire, combeferre/courfeyrac, and musichetta/joly/bossuet ^_^ (and yes, i made "de meaux" into bossuet's last name)
> 
> onwards, shall we??

This is how it goes:

She’s a madcap young thing, reckless, bold, with a sly glint in her gaze, ever-present. Flowing brown hair with the eyes to match, dimples to accompany her million-watt smile. A little jaded. Uncaring. Unabashed. Bruised knuckles that have seen too much in too little time. She’s got a quick wit, her words too sharp, too cutting. An uncanny ability to dive headfirst into things. Loving too much, and hating too much. Two extreme ends of a spectrum.

He always keeps his head up, pointed towards the sky. Always looking for the best in people, in everybody he comes across. A steadfast belief in taking action, rather than wait for the stars to align. Lustrous hair framing his rosy face in curls, blue eyes nearly obscured under long golden lashes. A silver tongue, a way with words. Caring, gentle. Kind. Even still, those who cross him are in for a nasty surprise.

Despite everything, they still believe in soulmates, just like everyone else. Perhaps it’s the idea that there’s someone out there, meant for you, just for you. A pervasive, underlying hope that never really goes away. Even in the most world-weary of cynics.

* * *

Éponine’s mark doesn’t start coming in until her freshman year of high school, which is, completely coincidentally, the year she meets Raphael Grantaire, an anomaly of a boy, with his paint-stained fingers and bruises up and down his arms. For just a little bit, she catches herself hoping he might be the one, before she realises how her mark—whatever little she has of it right now—is a little too rounded, while his has got more defined edges. Looks like he’s not going to be the one.

Not that she minds, really. She can’t imagine anything romantic happening between them. They’d probably kill each other.

At the end of the day, she goes home to yelling, always yelling, smashed bottles and cigarette stubs littering the grimy carpet of the little hovel her parents call an apartment. Her younger siblings would be in their room, staying out of it. They hold each other, help one another get through the worst. They always do.

She’s never been able to make sense of it, how her parents can have matching soulmate marks and yet bring out the worst in each other. Destructive. She can’t even begin to think about what she’d do if the universe did that to her. It feels like a bit of a cruel joke.

She meets Marius in their junior year, the boy having just moved up to New York State from Tennessee after his father died, leaving him in the care of his grandfather. Marius Pontmercy, with his green eyes, his bright smile, sprays of freckles dotting his face like constellations. A vague Southern twang to his melodic voice. The awkward way he holds himself, what with how he’s so tall and lanky. And his mark, on the inside of his wrist. A small half-circle, barely anything. Similar to hers. Very much so.

_ You’re it, _ she thinks when he sits down next to her in the chemistry lab, when the teacher designates them lab partners for the rest of the year. She releases something almost like a sigh of relief. _ My soulmate. I’ve found you. _

Funnily, Marius neither denies nor confirms her hopes, which leads to her following him around like a lost puppy, going wherever he goes. Hoping that one day he’ll realise that they’re _ meant _ for each other. Taking his word as gospel, laughing too loudly at his shitty jokes, excusing his mistakes every single time. Grantaire calls her out on this, calls her spineless. Overly dependent on one single person. Where did the spunky, feisty fourteen-year-old girl who crashed into him and swore like a sailor on the track field go?

Éponine doesn’t hear any of that. Looking back on it, she thinks it was too easy to let Marius be her escape. To let herself unquestioningly believe that he’s the answer to all her prayers that she was always too scared to voice aloud. To completely devote herself to one person, even if the person in question hardly ever spares her so much as a second glance.

Maybe that was part of the problem.

* * *

All those hopes are dashed at their high school graduation, when she’s talking with Marius and Grantaire and the sleeve of the former’s graduation robe rides up and Éponine glimpses it. There’s more to his mark now. An addition that hadn’t been there before. A straight line, ever so slight, connected to the curve of the semicircle. Her heart stops.

“No,” she mutters, taking a step back. Swallows the hard lump that’s formed in her throat. Grantaire looks at her curiously. “_Shit_. No, this can’t—you can’t—”

She takes her phone out, the old smartphone she’s had since the beginning of freshman year, and turns the camera towards her neck. Still the same old mark. _ Fuck. _

Marius looks down at his wrist, regret flooding his wide eyes. “Well, I—” He bites down on his lip. Éponine knows him. He’s one of those who want it all—the perfect soulmate with the perfect fairy-tale ending. And the universe has decided that she won’t be the one to provide him with that.

Grantaire puts an arm around her, remaining silent. Uncharacteristic, considering his tendency to talk shit, his inability to shut the fuck up. She leans into him, her breathing laboured, erratic. She’s always believed in soulmates. Everybody does, regardless of who they are. Even Grantaire. Even _ her_. How can Marius not be it?

“Fate is never wrong, Éponine,” Marius murmurs. Éponine wonders how a voice that soft, that tender can be so utterly heartbreaking. “We have other people meant for us. I think we owe it to ourselves, _ and _ to them, to see that through.”

She’s Alice falling down the rabbit hole, everything she thought she knew turning out to be nothing but a distorted version of reality. Still, she manages a tight smile at Marius. Now that she thinks of it, he never felt the same way about her as she did about him. Not really.

“Okay,” is all she can say, monotonous, dull. “Okay.”

He surprises her when he engulfs her in a hug, whispering in her ear, “Thank you.”

It’s ridiculous, really. How a single mark has the power to change so much in the blink of an eye. One moment she’s gazing at Marius like he’s the centre of her universe, her everything. The next, he’s somebody that she realises she barely knows.

Funny how the universe has a way of doing that.

* * *

She meets her roommate on move-in day before college starts and likes her immediately. Bubbly Cosette, with her pretty blonde hair that shines in the sunlight and a radiance that’s almost blinding. She’s effervescent. Made of stardust. Éponine sees the half-circle just beneath Cosette’s collarbone and she lets herself think that maybe _ she_, this beautiful girl with the pretty-eyed smile, might be her soulmate. She’s perfect. Someone Éponine can all too easily see herself falling in love with.

Shockingly, Cosette, unlike Marius, seems to think so too, at least at first, and it’s only two weeks until she holds Éponine’s hand for the first time. Naturally, Éponine takes the opportunity and runs with it. They rapidly become best friends and they kiss each other on the mouth, and sometimes Éponine will feel Cosette’s soft fingers running over her neck, where her mark rests, just beneath her jaw. They spend late nights in one of their beds, lying face to face, Éponine kissing Cosette’s fingertips as they whisper about the future, of making a place for themselves in the world, with 2.5 adopted children and a cat or two in the place that they’ll call their own in the middle of the city.

It’s so simple. Being with her. Rather ridiculous, how she’s barely eighteen and has already found the girl who’s supposed to be the love of her life. Yes, she’d thought this way with Marius as well, but that was different. He hadn’t reciprocated her feelings. And here Cosette is, loving her so freely, so uninhibitedly. Truly believing that they’ll make it. Some aren’t so lucky.

* * *

Of course all that _ has _ to turn out to be too good to be true, because after six months, Cosette talks to Marius at the café they started frequenting at the beginning of the year, the Café Musain, and there’s something different in the vibes between the two. That also happens to be when Éponine realises Cosette’s mark has begun to resemble Marius’ far more than it resembles her own. So, barely able to blink back her tears, she lets Cosette go with a big smile plastered on her face and well wishes for her future with Marius. A guy who, she can’t help but bitterly note, Cosette probably wouldn’t have even noticed in that way if the mark hadn’t told her to. And that’s that on that.

She and Grantaire have made friends, of course, having latched onto a particular group that seems to call itself Les Amis de l’ABC, for reasons Éponine can’t quite discern. Must’ve been inspired by the French. She enjoys listening to their long-winded talks, their dreams for the future, to make an impact. She’s struck up a friendship with Joseph Bahorel and Musichetta Chevalier while Grantaire’s befriended Auguste Joly and Bossuet de Meaux in particular, Marius having grown close to Adrien Courfeyrac. Marius had been convinced they were soulmates until he noticed the changes in his own mark and Cosette’s.

Éponine’s always been one to notice people’s soulmate marks, if they’re located somewhere easily visible. Musichetta, Joly, and Bossuet all have matching triangles on their ankles, iridescent in the light. The three of them are so obviously happy together. They make it look so easy sometimes, this whole soulmate thing.

Out of all of them, Éponine finds herself most intrigued by Gabriel Enjolras. Rather quiet, keeping to himself much of the time. He’s kind, though; hardly ever raises his voice with people, unless he believes they really deserve it. Handsome. Charismatic. He’s got a way with words, spoken in that Southern lilt of his. Éponine finds him to be a bit of an enigma. Curiouser and curiouser.

As far as friends go, though, she’s glad to have the ones she has. They’re inseparable by the end of freshman year, never one without at least one other. Maybe the universe has the capacity to be kind sometimes.

* * *

Éponine meets someone. Montparnasse. And even though he isn’t her soulmate, if the black serpent wrapped around his forearm is any indication, she still lets herself be taken with him, smoking weed on his fire escape, gallivanting through the city during late nights on his motorcycle. They’re in a relationship for quite some time, nine months through sophomore year of college, until one April night, abruptly, when she’s over at his place rolling a joint, he tells her he’s met the one. He’s met his soulmate.

She lets him go easily. Too easily, really. It’s okay—she didn’t love him, not like that. It was good while it lasted, she supposes. The sex kind of sucked nine times out of ten. And he was indifferent towards her feelings much of the time. That’s more than enough proof she needs to let her know that they aren’t meant to be.

She decides to take the long way home for once, making the journey on foot. A downpour soaks the city, not a surface left dry, droplets of rain rolling off her trench coat, the streets of Manhattan a blurred mass of umbrellas bobbing along the pavement as harsh winds howl past. She takes a turn onto a less crowded street, a little thrown off by how much emptier it is, flickering yellow streetlights rendered dim by the storm. She fixates on how the asphalt seems to glitter, pelted with raindrops, and nearly doesn’t notice the red car that pulls up beside her.

Her fight or flight instincts are set on fire during the few seconds it takes for a window to roll down, thoughts about how _ this is it this is how I die and I haven’t even met my fucking soulmate yet well goodbye cruel world I guess I’ll miss you but not really _ dwindling considerably when she sees that it’s just Enjolras. She releases a relieved breath.

“Éponine?” She takes in his wide eyes, concern written all over his pretty face. “What are you doing out so late?”

“I could ask you the same thing, pretty boy,” she swiftly shoots back, a little harsher than she intended to be. To his credit, he acts as if he doesn’t notice.

“I just got back from the library,” he explains, patient as could be. “I was working late on an assignment.” He raises his eyebrows expectantly then, as if to say _ your turn_.

Éponine sighs. “My boyfriend—well, ex now, I guess—we just broke up. Said he found his soulmate. Wants to see that through. The typical bullshit.” She looks around at herself, soaked hair sticking to her skin, droplets of rain dotting her face. “Thought I’d walk home instead of taking the subway.”

Enjolras frowns. “You live in SoHo.”

“Yeah, I know, genius.” He’s probably thinking about how they’re currently in Hell’s Kitchen. A long way from SoHo, kind of, Éponine will admit.

Enjolras’ teeth dig into his bottom lip, contemplative. The thought of her walking all the way home in the pouring rain at night in New York City makes his anxiety flare up quite a bit. After a while, he offers, “Do you want a ride home?”

Éponine raises her eyebrows. “I don’t think you’d want me getting those leather seats wet.”

Enjolras just smiles. “That’s not a no.”

She still looks doubtful, hesitating to get in even when she hears the sound of the car doors unlocking. He sighs a little, saying, “Look, if it means that much to you, we can cover the seat with something. I’ve got a waterproof towel here.”

In spite of herself, Éponine snorts. “Really? That’s excessive.”

Enjolras joins in on her laughter at his own expense. “Well, I never know when I might need it.”

She watches as he reaches into the back and covers the passenger seat with the towel, resisting a laugh at how earnest he appears to be in the process, so focused. When he’s done fussing, she dryly asks, “You all done?”

He shoots a look back her way, but it’s in jest. Even she can tell that. It makes her feel something she can’t quite name. “Come on, get in.”

Éponine does as she’s told, Enjolras driving on once she’s closed the door. She glances over at him as he drives and remarks offhandedly, “Of course you drive a Lexus.”

Enjolras says nothing, though spots of faint pink bloom in his cheeks.

Éponine leans back and sighs, pulling her hair to one side and rubbing at the mark on her neck, nearly half-formed at this point. She’s got a habit of doing that, constantly finding herself reaching up to rub the soulmate mark etched into the olive skin near her jaw whenever she’s deep in thought.

“I thought you loved the concept of soulmates,” Enjolras says at some point, occasionally stealing glances at her out of the corner of his eye.

A wry laugh. Éponine gazes out the window, her breath fogging it up. She absent-mindedly traces a pattern into it. What she’s got of her soulmate mark. “I did. And then I didn’t. Now I don’t know what to believe.”

“Why is that?” Enjolras asks before he can stop himself. Realising his mistake, he quickly adds, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, of course.”

Éponine turns away from him, hugging herself. Shuts him out as she mutters, “Good, because I don’t.”

She falls silent and he doesn’t press her any further, the only sounds being the muffled rain against the windshield and the music playing, vaguely melancholy. Éponine muses on the fact that it sounds like something right off a playlist titled “songs for a moody late-night drive”—well, that’s what she personally would call it anyway—before she raises her eyebrows upon the realisation that the current song is one of Taylor Swift’s. Huh. Enjolras just keeps surprising her. She considers questioning him about the matter before deciding against it. That’s a conversation for another time. A lighter time.

_ “You got that James Dean daydream look in your eye…” _

The silence between them becomes unbearable so she breaks it, asking, “So, you got a tattoo yet, pretty boy?”

Her body still turned away, she turns her head to gaze at him as he thinks about it for a bit. “It’s still coming in,” he replies at last, carefully. “I’m not sure what it’s going to be yet. It only started coming in around the start of freshman year of college. It’s taking a long damn time to appear.”

Éponine smiles. It’s a little heartbreaking, Enjolras thinks, how the world doesn’t get to be graced with her smile more often. It brings out a shimmer in her eyes. “When I was little, my mother told me some soulmate marks take longer to appear than others,” she says.

She returns to watching the streets rolling past, the lights of the city distorted by the rain pattering against the windows. Every now and then, she catches glimpses of her reflection in the glass, noting that the curved line on her neck seems to be growing thicker towards the middle. A crescent moon, perhaps. But she can’t know for sure.

Enjolras startles her out of her thoughts when he says, “You’ll be okay.” She looks up, giving him a curious look. He turns his head momentarily to give her a little reassuring smile, before he looks back at the road, saying, “You’ll find your person one day, and you’ll make each other happy.”

Éponine frowns. “Why do I even need another specific person to make me happy, though?”

“You don’t,” Enjolras clarifies. “But if you want, I’m sure they’re out there somewhere. Even I can admit that it’d be nice to wake up every morning next to someone who loves you no matter what. Don’t you think?”

Éponine considers it for a bit. He has a point. For so long, she’s been too scared of voicing those hopes aloud, always containing it to her belief in soulmates. Never anything further than that. “What if I can’t love them? Not in the way they want me to, at least,” she murmurs.

Another encouraging smile. “Don’t beat yourself up about it,” he tells her, like it’s the easiest thing in the world, as he pulls up in front of her building. “You’ve still got plenty of time to figure it all out.”

* * *

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment when she and Enjolras really became friends, but Éponine likes to think it’s that—the time he found her walking by herself in the rain and took it upon himself to risk the fancy leather seats in his fancy red Lexus and drive her home, sodden clothes and all. She just can’t seem to get rid of him after that.

It’s odd, considering how he’s a little reserved when it comes to most people and she’d never been too fond of wealthy privileged white pretty boys before. Even if this particular white pretty boy _ is _ on a quest to save the world, so idealistic it borders on naive. And he isn’t a dick about it when she calls him out on his privilege. Appreciates it, even. He’s a strange one.

So she doesn’t question it. After all, it’s always nice to have someone who has her back. No questions asked.

* * *

In their junior year, Grantaire’s soulmate turns out to be Jehan, and against all odds, despite their countless differences, they just _ click_. Éponine had dreaded a situation like her parents’, what with how she’d initially thought Jehan is the last person she could see as Grantaire’s soulmate, but the guy seems happy. A lot happier than she’s ever seen him, actually. Gentle, loving Jehan brings out the best in him.

Éponine starts hanging out with Enjolras more, with how quite a few of their friends have paired off, soulmate or otherwise. Courfeyrac leaves a trail of broken hearts behind him before Combeferre turns out to be the one for him. Cosette and Marius have eyes for nobody but each other now. Musichetta, Bossuet, and Joly make up three sides of a perfect triangle.

Even still, Éponine witnesses an instance of soulmates not working out. Feuilly and Bahorel wind up with the same mark—a geometric heart—but they mutually decide they’re better off as friends. No tears. No destruction. Just a mutual agreement between friends. It seems even the universe can make mistakes sometimes. It reassures her somewhat, to know that not all scenarios like that will end up quite as nasty as her parents’ did.

It still irritates her somewhat, how everyone else seems to have found The One by the time they’re at the ripe old age of twenty-one. No matter how many times she repeats to herself that she doesn’t need another person in order to be whole, she still longs for that. Someone to hold her too close.

* * *

Cosette and Marius announce their engagement once finals are completed that year. They even have a date already, Éponine’s surprised (and maybe a little resentful) to find. February sixteenth. Turns out they’ve been planning a lot of this in secret. She’s not sure how they’ll manage, since they’re going to be rather busy with senior year at the same time they’re planning their wedding, but what does she know?

Éponine sits out on the fire escape of her building, a bottle of dessert wine in hand, as she watches the sky changing colours, rosy pinks and soft yellows fading into brighter reds and oranges. Grantaire’s out, doing whatever it is he does with Jehan, so she’s just minding her own business until she hears the buzzing of the doorbell.

Turning around with a frown, she climbs back into the little apartment, reluctant as she does, and pads over to the door, unlocking it and swinging it open. Enjolras stands there for reasons she can’t make out. She gives him a look.

“Can I help you?” Éponine asks, raising an eyebrow.

Enjolras’ cheeks flush a fiery red. Still, he shrugs. “I heard from Jehan how they and R are out. I thought you might have wanted some company. You’ve been a little MIA lately.”

Éponine scrunches up her face and smiles up at him. “Shouldn’t you be studying for the LSAT, pretty boy?”

Enjolras rolls his eyes and laughs. “Our junior year is barely over. I’ve still got over a year to do that.”

Éponine just stares at him for a few moments more before she steps aside to let him in, instructing him to take his shoes off as she walks over and picks up the bottle of wine from the table by the door, making her way back towards the window and out onto the fire escape. Enjolras follows her, wincing a little when he steps out onto the wrought iron in just his socks, taking a seat beside her as she slides the window shut and leans back against the brick wall.

She offers the bottle to him. He declines with a polite shake of his head.

Éponine just goes back to watching the sunset sky, cotton candy clouds drifting past as the faint silhouette of the moon fades in and out of view. Even with how Enjolras doesn’t say anything, she likes the feeling of his presence. He’s just there. But it’s comforting.

After a while, he comments quietly, “So Cosette and Marius are engaged.”

“Yup.” Éponine takes another swig of her wine. She’s a little woozy already. “Good for them, I guess. They’ve known each other for three years, and they’ve been together for two and a half. I mean, why wait if you already know you’re soulmates, right?”

Enjolras chuckles, a soft, lilting sound. “You know not all soulmates are meant to be.”

“Yeah.” Éponine gazes out at the city, a faraway look in her eyes. “But _ clearly_, that isn’t going to be the case for them. They’re fucking perfect for each other,” she mumbles, a trace of bitterness breaking through the noncommittal façade she’d so carefully crafted.

Enjolras frowns, looking at her. “You sound a bit upset.”

“I’m fine,” Éponine says immediately. “Or at least I will be, eventually.”

He doesn’t push it any further, just watches her thoughtfully as she slides down further, slumped back against the wall. Honking car horns, shouting street vendors, and whistling pigeons provide a bit of a soundtrack for them, a symphony of chaos, the kind one can only find in the big city. It’s an odd sort of solace.

“You know, I used to think Marius was my soulmate,” Éponine mentions out of the blue, laughing a little derisively to herself as she gulps down another mouthful of wine.

“Oh?” Enjolras looks at her again, cocking his head slightly to the side curiously.

“Yeah, for two years,” Éponine says. Another wry laugh. “I thought his mark looked like mine when I first met him back in high school, when he moved up here in junior year. But then we graduated, and his mark grew while mine didn’t.”

She sighs, shaking her head. “I had the most pathetic fucking crush on him. Followed him around everywhere, did everything I could to make him happy. I thought maybe if I waited long enough, he’d come around and realise we’re soulmates.” She looks at Enjolras, meeting his eyes. “Then I realised we weren’t at graduation, and I only realised then that I actually barely knew him.”

Éponine laughs again, but it sounds hollow, as she turns her gaze back to the Manhattan rooftops. “And then I met Cosette when she became my roommate in freshman year, and for a hot second, I thought _ she _ might’ve been the one,” she goes on. “I thought so for six months. She did too. We were together, and we were happy, at least until one day she noticed her mark grew and mine didn’t and it turned out to look more like Marius’ than it looked like mine. And apparently they ‘clicked’, more than she and I ever did.” She sighs. “And now they’re getting married.”

“Yeah.” Enjolras gazes at her, biting his lip. “Anything I can do to help take your mind off it?”

Éponine looks at him a little strangely. “Don’t you have a reputation to uphold? You know, the marble man and all that shit? Why are you being so nice to me?”

“Because we’re friends,” Enjolras replies. Those three words, so deceptively simple. It sets something alight inside of Éponine. She’s not sure why. “And I’m not made of marble. It’s hardly a reputation, I’d think,” he says, laughing quietly. “I just don’t have patience for bullshit.”

It’s weird, hearing him curse. “Why me, specifically?” Éponine asks.

“Well, the fact that most of our other friends seem to have decided to spend every waking moment with their soulmates might be a contributing factor,” Enjolras says, a little dry.

Éponine snorts. “Sounds unhealthy.”

“I know. But I don’t think I can blame them. We’re young; we’re bound to rush into things.” Enjolras looks down into his lap before looking back up, saying, “I figured we could keep each other company. You’re good to have around.”

“Really? My parents always told me I was a waste of space,” Éponine says, lowering her voice.

Something in Enjolras breaks at her candid words, so resigned, yet so matter-of-fact. “You’re not. I promise you’re not.”

She looks up at him, and he can’t help but think about how it really is a pity that the world doesn’t get to see that bright-eyed smile of hers more often. “Thanks, pretty boy,” she murmurs. Vulnerable. Sincere. “That means a lot.”

* * *

Somehow, Éponine finds that she genuinely enjoys Enjolras’ company. He’s different with her than he is with the others—not a bad different, necessarily. He knows when to give her space, when she’s mad at the world for whatever reason it is she chooses to be mad about that day, and he lets her know that he’ll always be around should she want to talk. It doesn’t take long for them to become the best of friends. Not quite in the same way as she is with Grantaire, or he is with Combeferre and Courfeyrac, but it still means a lot, especially to her. He comes around and often acts as nothing but a steadying presence to her even when she doesn’t feel like talking to him. It’s comforting in itself. She’s never gotten a lot of quiet before. She doesn’t know _ why _ he’s taken to directing a lot of his attention towards her, but she’s grateful for it. She doesn’t tell him that, of course, but he knows that she is, and that’s all that really matters.

It’s pouring again when Éponine steps into his apartment, the one he shares with Courfeyrac and Combeferre, who are currently out. Her hair clings to the nape of her neck and whatever isn’t covered by her trench coat is completely drenched. Enjolras tells her to go take a warm shower, he’ll order themselves some pizza, one pepperoni and the other with pineapple, because he knows she likes it. He also leaves some clothes out for her to wear—an old pair of boxers and a purple NYU hoodie that forms sweater paws when she pulls it on over her head because its sleeves are too long for her short arms.

She moseys out of the bathroom, steam curling out the open door behind her, and into the living room, where Enjolras sits on the floor with two boxes of pizza arranged carefully on the coffee table before him plus a Tupperware full to the brim with snickerdoodles. He looks up at the sound of her light footfalls, giving her a little smile and patting the empty space beside him. Éponine snorts but goes to sit beside him anyway.

It’s warm at his place, always with a faint smell of sugar and cinnamon lingering in the air—she’s learned that he likes to bake in his spare time, and sometimes stress bakes. The proof is laid out before her right now. She snatches up a snickerdoodle and bites into it. Nobody makes snickerdoodles quite like Gabriel Enjolras does.

“Do you want to watch anything?” he asks, carefully easing out a slice of pepperoni pizza and lifting it to his mouth.

Éponine shrugs, not having thought much of it and mentioning the first movie that comes to mind. “_Clueless_?”

So Enjolras puts it on and they spend the next hour and a half gorging themselves on pizza and snickerdoodles and somehow at some point during the movie she ends up with her head resting on his shoulder with their backs against the couch. Éponine licks grease off her fingers once she’s finally satisfied herself with the amount of food she’s consumed, absently scratching away at her chipped nail polish until her nails have been picked clean.

Every now and then, she glances up at him without lifting her head from his shoulder; he keeps on watching the movie, mouth set in a firm line. She can glimpse the barest hint of a five o’clock shadow along his jawline and he smells like cookies and lavender Lush soap.

“Hey,” Éponine murmurs, her voice barely audible amid the storm raging on outside and the volume of the TV. Enjolras looks down at her, the corner of his mouth tilting upwards in the slightest smile. “Thanks. Y’know, for everything. For being there. For being my friend. I don’t deserve a friend like you.”

She’s not sure what it is that prompts the confession—perhaps it’s her full belly, or the thunderstorm, or just the fact that she’s just so grateful for his general existence. He deserves to hear it.

The tiny smile on his face morphs into a full-fledged one at her words as he gently nudges her. A friendly little gesture that she somehow finds herself savouring. “I like being your friend,” he says candidly. “You always make life a little more interesting.”

Éponine smiles and buries her face in his shoulder, nudges her nose against his collarbone. Courfeyrac and Combeferre come home a few hours later to find them asleep, Enjolras’ head tipped back against the couch and Éponine with hers in his lap, his arm draped around her waist. They don’t wake them up.

* * *

February comes around and Cosette and Marius tie the knot in a winter wedding right out of a teenage dream and she doesn’t let it bother her. Éponine smiles, so wide until her cheeks hurt, and she doesn’t let it bother her.

She’s over them, though. Really. Her stupid high school crush on Marius had been just that—a stupid high school crush. He never even felt the same way. And in the grand scheme of things, her six-month relationship with Cosette back in freshman year is insignificant now. So she stands there in her lilac bridesmaid’s dress and tries to look as happy as she possibly can be while the happy couple exchange vows to love each other forever and ever.

The room where the reception is held feels way too small for her liking, so after the giddy newlyweds’ first dance as a married couple and the dance floor opens, Éponine pulls on her coat and escapes to the roof despite the freezing cold air. She just needs space to breathe. A little peace and quiet.

Somehow she isn’t surprised when Enjolras finds her about ten minutes later, his coat pulled over his midnight-blue tuxedo and a Hufflepuff scarf tucked into the collar. Éponine looks up when he meets her at the edge, leaning slightly over the railing.

“You okay?” he asks quietly.

Éponine shrugs. “Why wouldn’t I be?” She looks back out at the snow-capped rooftops, sighing and watching her breath evaporate before her eyes. “It’s just a lot. There are a lot of people down there in that room. It gets suffocating.”

“Ah.” For some reason Enjolras feels like that isn’t entirely the case, but he doesn’t pressure her. She’ll confide in him when she wants to. If she wants to.

They just stand there side by side, gazing out at the city. It’s one of the few moments when Éponine can feel like she’s at peace. Like the world’s gone quiet just for a little while, even with all the hustle and bustle of the streets below. She only wishes she could see stars here. She’s never seen stars, not in real life. The lights are too damn bright.

She murmurs then, “I just want to get away from all of this. Just for a little bit.”

“And how would you do that?” Enjolras asks, gazing at her.

Éponine juts out her bottom lip, cocking her head just slightly. “I don’t know. Go on an adventure, maybe. I don’t know _ how _ I’d do it, but I would. I’ve never really been outside of New York before, not since my family moved here from Santa Fe when I was really little. I want to see what’s out there.” She smiles wryly then, adding, “And also, it’d be a nice change, not being surrounded twenty-four/seven by people who’ve fulfilled their soulmate quota.”

Enjolras nods, a little thoughtful. “It would be nice.”

They stay there for a little while more, until Éponine’s teeth chatter and she starts visibly shivering from the cold. Enjolras lets it go on, with how she’s clearly refusing to give in to her body’s urges and go back inside, and he gets to about three minutes before he suggests, “Why don’t you and I go back down?”

Éponine sighs, finally admitting defeat. “Okay.” She looks up at him. “Save me a dance?” she requests in spite of herself.

Enjolras smiles, and somehow that makes up for everything that’s happened. “I’ll be waiting right there.”

* * *

Graduation soon looms upon them and Éponine cries when she finds out her siblings had been saving up money in secret to buy her a beat-up old Chevy pickup truck from a Brooklyn junkyard as an early graduation present three months in advance. It’s on the verge of falling apart, and she’s initially furious that Azelma and Gavroche spent five hundred dollars, which is practically a million by their family’s standards given their financial situation at home, on such a piece of junk when they could be using that sort of money for themselves, but in the end she realises she doesn’t _ care_, all she cares about is that they did that for her. Bahorel even offers to help her repair it until it’s as good as new.

She walks across that stage in May and gets that diploma she’s been working so hard for over the past four years, and later, they all go over to Jehan’s industrial Brooklyn loft for celebratory drinks. It’s late afternoon and Éponine finds her way out onto the fire escape, a can of beer in hand as she watches the sky with its ever-changing colours. Naturally, Enjolras soon comes and finds her, joining her outside.

“Hey,” he greets, a rosy-cheeked smile on his face, blue eyes alight. “Congratulations.”

Éponine flashes him an easy grin. “Right back at ya, pretty boy.”

“I heard you got a car,” he says. “From your siblings.”

“Pickup truck,” she corrects him. “But yup, that’s the gist of it.”

“Do you want to go on a road trip?” Enjolras offers, the words slipping so easily from his lips.

Éponine gapes at him for a good ten seconds before, try as she might, she can’t help but burst out laughing. “_What_?”

“You mentioned back in February how you wanted to get away from all this,” he points out matter-of-factly. “Just for a little bit.”

She frowns, a little doubtful. “I don’t have _ money_, first of all.”

“That won’t be a problem,” Enjolras tells her. “I’ve got plenty. And no, I won’t let you pay me back.”

Éponine smiles, a little dazed, caught off-guard by his invite. She _ did _ talk all that shit about wanting to get away from all the soulmates bullshit, even if only for a little bit. Here’s her chance, in the form of a blue-eyed, blond-haired, six-foot Southern gentleman who at this point she’s pretty sure is her guardian angel personified.

“I—sure,” she says at last, nodding as she takes a sip of her beer. “Why not?”

So that’s how she finds herself hitting the road on the first of June, nothing but Enjolras, a packed suitcase, some emergency things like a first-aid kit and a tent, and her newly restored junkyard truck in tow. Bahorel had somehow managed to install a Bluetooth car stereo in the old-ass model. Éponine’s not exactly sure _ how _ he did it, but she isn’t going to complain.

They’ve got no specific destination in mind, so at first, it’s just hours upon hours of driving, the wind rushing past their faces through the rolled-down windows and nothing but fair sky above. Enjolras idly suggests Niagara Falls as their first stop as he hums along to David Bowie while Éponine drives, chasing moonlight as they race down the interstate. And so it begins.

The next month and a half is a series of ups and downs as they tear across the country like a cyclone, making stops here and there, big cities and small towns alike. Trying deep-dish Chicago pizza for the first time, the wind of the city making the hairs on the backs of their necks stand up on end. Her piggybacking on him through Disney World, donning fancy overpriced mouse ears and making a point of going on every ride. Going to a rodeo in Texas, him buying her a pair of clunky leather cowboy boots that she claims to hate and yet keeps on wearing anyway. Attending a Killers concert in Las Vegas, with her perched on his shoulders as she screams the words to “Mr. Brightside” with a thousand other people. They go everywhere—driving up into the mountains, going down to sandy beaches, racing through the searing desert, making their way through open sky country. It’s exhilarating.

They’re on their way to San Francisco three days after the Fourth of July, having stocked up on light layers, with how they’ve been told it’s chilly in the Bay Area around this time of year. Enjolras drives and Éponine reaches for a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, ripping the wrapper open with that oh so satisfying crinkle and tossing a Cheeto into her mouth as “Getaway Car” plays in the background.

“I never thought you were the kind of guy to listen to Taylor fucking Swift,” Éponine comments, right as the song is coming a close. Enjolras laughs, euphonious, good-natured.

“She’s talented,” he says with a casual shrug of his shoulders. “Especially when it comes to lyrics.”

“Yeah.” Éponine leans back, her arm dangling out of the open window and her bare feet propped up on the dash, tapping one foot against the other as the current song ends and the next song begins. She finds herself humming along to it, discarding of the empty Cheetos packet in the little bin tucked under the dashboard.

_ “He doesn’t look a thing like Jesus, but he talks like a gentleman, like you imagined when you were young…” _

“Y’know, this song kinda reminds me of us,” Éponine remarks offhandedly, gazing out the window at the trees rolling past.

Enjolras raises his eyebrows. “How so?”

Éponine shrugs. She’s not sure why, really. “It just does.”

They drive into the city through the Golden Gate Bridge at a quarter to eleven in the morning, which gives them plenty of time to check into the Airbnb they’ve booked in advance before setting out to explore the city. They take the cable cars everywhere, going down to Fisherman’s Wharf and the Aquarium of the Bay before heading into Union Square. Later that afternoon, they sit on a curb eating Ghirardelli ice cream before Éponine drags Enjolras into her truck and they set off driving, blasting “Heaven Is a Place on Earth”, seemingly with no particular destination in mind, until she drives up and onto a cliff, stopping just a few yards from the edge and hopping out of the truck and onto the hood. Enjolras has no choice but to follow.

His breath catches at the spectacular view that greets them—a view of the city from afar, with the Golden Gate Bridge shining under the late afternoon sunlight, the waters glistening below. He’s not entirely sure this is legal, since there must be a good reason as to why nobody else is around, but Éponine looks so content, relaxed, something he hasn’t seen in a while from her. So he lets it slide.

Éponine leans back against the windshield, bringing one knee up to her chest as the other leg dangles over the edge of the hood, and she sighs. The soft sunset glow turns her olive skin golden, makes her dark hair shine, catches the sparkle in her warm brown eyes. Enjolras climbs up and sits beside her, palms planted firmly on the metal as he gazes at her, thoughtful, reflective.

“Wanna take a picture, pretty boy?” Éponine teases after a bit. Enjolras’ cheeks grow warm. She must’ve caught him staring a little bit.

She straightens up, takes her phone out of the back pocket of her cutoff jean shorts. “Come on, golden hour photos are always the best.”

He chuckles and obliges, leaning in close to her as she points the front-facing camera towards themselves, all smiles despite having the sun in their eyes. It takes them a few tries, but eventually, they get it right. Éponine tucks her phone back into her pocket and goes back to leaning against the windshield as they watch the sunset casting shadows across the city.

“Hey,” Éponine speaks up after a while. Enjolras looks at her, and there’s something a little guarded, a little reticent about the look on her face. She sucks in a deep breath before she says, “Thank you. For this. All of this.” She bows her head and smiles to herself. He catches himself wishing he could see that smile more often as she looks back up at him, dark eyes vulnerable, absolutely sincere, and her soft smile morphs into something of a playful grin. “I think the distraction worked.”

“Mhm.” Enjolras smiles right back at her, saying, “We should do this again sometime.”

Éponine giggles. She’s not sure when exactly she became a person who giggles. “Hm. We should.”

It’s pleasant silence for a little while more, broken only by the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks way, way down and the seagulls squawking overhead. It’s peaceful. Éponine likes it.

“My parents were soulmates,” she murmurs, unprompted. “_Are_. They’re soulmates. But they bring out the worst in each other. I don’t know how they stay together. _ Why _ they stay together. I think neither of them want to admit that the universe can fuck up sometimes.” She looks up at Enjolras with a sad little smile, eyes a little downcast. “I’ve been so desperate to find my soulmate all my life, at least I used to be, but I was always so scared—what if they turn out to be for me what my father is to my mother?”

She sighs and leans back against the windshield, hugging her knees and absently tracing her finger along the flame-like patterns stitched into her cowboy boots. “I guess I’ve kind of looked for my soulmate in everyone I meet,” she admits. “When I first met R, I thought he might’ve been it, but that only lasted, like, two days. And then there was Marius, and after that Cosette. Now I’m not sure anymore.”

Éponine tucks one of the loose strands of hair framing her face behind her ear, the rest having been swept up into a ponytail. “Hell, I’m not even sure I _ have _ a soulmate.” She looks back at Enjolras, biting her lip. “Which is ridiculous, I know, because pretty much everyone has one.” She pauses, considering her words before amending, “Well, maybe not _ everyone_. But like. A lot of people do.” She goes quiet again, gazing off into the distance and sighing as she murmurs, “Too bad they’re not always right for you.”

She reaches up, absently rubs against the spot on her neck where her mark is, as is her nervous habit. It’s grown quite a bit, she thinks—a black crescent moon has formed completely and tiny dots make up a curved dotted line opposite the little moon, though a few of them seem to look more like short lines protruding outwards rather than dots. She wonders what the other half is going to be.

“I’m sure the right one is out there for you,” Enjolras tells her, reaching out and tentatively placing his hand on top of hers. His touch is light, barely there. Éponine doesn’t pull away.

She cracks a little smile. “You really think so, pretty boy?”

“Yes, I do.” He rubs his thumb reassuringly against the back of her hand. “Don’t think about it too much. You’ve got the rest of your life.”

Éponine pouts, rather childish, self-deprecatingly maudlin. “Yeah, but everyone else we know’s found their soulmate _ now_.”

“Not everyone,” Enjolras points out. “Your sister hasn’t. And your brother doesn’t even have a soulmate mark yet.”

“Okay, fine, but _ most _ everybody else has,” Éponine amends. “Why can’t I?” She hates how whiny she comes off as, but it’s frustrating witnessing everyone else being so in love with their perfect partners while she’s still searching.

Enjolras’ long fingers wrap around her small hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. Éponine decides she likes the feeling. “They’re out there. Don’t worry about it too much.”

Éponine smiles at him. “Why don’t you ever talk about _ your _ soulmate, Gabriel?”

Enjolras laughs and bows his head. “I think that’s the first time you’ve ever called me by my name.”

“Don’t get too used to it, pretty boy.”

“I won’t. At least you don’t call me Apollo like the others do. I think I prefer pretty boy.”

He sighs and gazes off into the distance, watching the sunset. The Golden Gate Bridge in the amber light burns brighter than a freshly painted stop sign. Éponine watches him—the way the late afternoon sunlight catches in his blond hair, the way his blue eyes have a sparkle in them. She’s called him pretty boy for about as long as she’s known him, but she’s never really thought about how fitting a nickname it really is. He’s beautiful.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she murmurs.

Enjolras turns his head and gives her a vaguely melancholy smile. “My soulmate will come to me when they do,” he says at last. “When they want to. _ If _ they want to. I’ll be okay. Soulmate or no soulmate.”

Éponine thinks about his words all the way back, after night has fallen and they decide to go get some dinner before driving back to the Airbnb. She thinks about it as she tucks her legs sideways underneath her on the long drive and rolls the window all the way down, hooking her arm over the top of the door and resting her head on the crook of her elbow, watching the lights of the city blur past her eyes. Enjolras drives and Éponine finds herself drifting off to the mellifluous sounds of Elton John’s soft crooning.

_Hold me closer, tiny dancer  
_ _Count the headlights on the highway  
_ _Lay me down in sheets of linen  
_ _You had a busy day today_

* * *

Summer ends and Enjolras passes the LSAT with flying colours, getting accepted to the NYU School of Law, while Éponine lands herself an internship in social services, working closely with children in less than ideal home situations. She also finds herself a little more than a little irked to discover that Enjolras has started dating someone not long after they returned to New York from their road trip, their little adventure together.

His name is Michael and he’s one of Enjolras’ fellow law students, and he’s into white boy rap and long pointless drives through the city and a bunch of other stupid shit Éponine can’t understand. He’s also nice to her, which just annoys her even more. His smile is too treacly, his voice too nasal. He’s like an itch on a part of her body she can’t quite reach.

Éponine tells Enjolras all the time that his annoying boyfriend is annoying, but he just rolls his eyes every time, chuckling good-naturedly in the way he only does with her. That bothers her as well.

She’s in the living room of her and Grantaire’s (and now Jehan’s, since he moved in with them recently; Éponine’s had some trouble adjusting to rooming with a couple) apartment with the raven-haired man in question. Jehan’s out, got a class going on, so she has Grantaire all to herself that afternoon. It reminds her of the afternoons spent during high school, when he’d bring her back to his place to smoke weed in his bedroom and count the glow-in-the-dark stars pasted onto his ceiling from long before he even moved into the place after his family made the move from Florida.

He’s listening to Éponine rant about the whole thing with Enjolras and Michael, nodding along at certain points as he takes swigs of his wine, before he cuts in to say—

“Éponine. Babe. You’re jealous of him.”

Éponine splutters on her next words. “I—_what_?”

“You’re jealous,” Grantaire says, acting oh so patient and high-and-mighty, and it infuriates Éponine to no end, the way he says it like it’s the most obvious thing. “Enjy’s been spending more time with Michael than you, so you’re jealous. It’s only natural. I mean—” He laughs a little, deadpanning, “He’s kind of replaced me as your best friend at this point—”

“Hey, _ I’m _ not the one who found their soulmate,” Éponine interrupts, peeved.

“It’s fine, Jehan’s kind of replaced you as _ my _ best friend. No offence. But you’ve got Enj now, right? So it all worked out in the end.” Grantaire downs the rest of his bottle of wine and lets out an impossibly loud burp before he resumes, “Anyway, point is, you’re jealous.” He reaches out to boop Éponine’s nose before she swats his hand away. “Y’know, you can just _ talk _ to him about it.”

Éponine may scowl at Grantaire about it now, but that’s what she ends up doing, because she misses Enjolras, and Michael is taking him away from her and, even if it makes her sound like a bit of a possessive dick, she’s not the biggest fan of that.

Next time she sees him, she’s taking a stroll through Washington Square Park to admire the drastic changes in nature that autumn has brought upon the greenery and just so happens to run into him near the arch, tugging on his sleeve to get his attention.

Enjolras turns around and his blue eyes light up with a smile. “Oh, hi, ’Ponine.” She’s not sure where that diminutive came from exactly, but she finds that she kind of likes it. He cocks his head to the side, hands in his coat pockets. “I’m just waiting for Michael.”

“No,” Éponine blurts out.

He’s taken aback, eyebrows furrowing in bemusement. “What do you mean ‘no’?”

“I mean—” She chews on her bottom lip, searching her mind for the right words. She’s not used to being quite so honest, so openly vulnerable, even with him. She sucks in a deep breath and babbles, “I mean, I’m jealous. I mean, we don’t hang out as much as we used to ever since you got yourself a _ boyfriend_, and I don’t like that. I mean, you’re kind of like my best friend now and I’ve never been all that great at sharing; just ask my siblings. I mean, I _ miss _ you. Also, fuck you for making me jealous.”

(So obviously he reschedules his plans with Michael. Because that’s just the kind of person he is now when it comes to Éponine.)

* * *

It’s a chilly October day, just a week before Enjolras’ birthday, when he ends things with Michael. Éponine doesn’t know what caused it, but she offers Enjolras some solace, so now the two of them are out on the fire escape of his Upper East Side apartment late that night wrapped up in blankets and eating his baked goods and they just—talk.

“I don’t think it would have worked out in the long term, anyway,” Enjolras says absently as he gazes out at the city lights. “It wasn’t like he was my soulmate.”

Éponine frowns, reaching over to pluck a cookie out of the Tupperware in Enjolras’ lap. “You know sometimes soulmates don’t work out.”

“Well, yes.” Enjolras looks at her, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “But still.”

He returns his gaze to the sky; it’s a full moon, partially obscured by clouds. It fascinates him, just how vibrant New York is even at night, making equally as much noise as it does during the day, bursting with life. The city never sleeps.

Éponine looks at her reflection in the window and brushes her hair to one side, sweeping it over one shoulder to get a full view of her soulmate mark. It’s complete now—a crescent moon making up one half, with lines and dots that form the rays of the sun on the other. Sun and moon.

She looks back at Enjolras, tilting her head to the side and grinning as she asks, “So, you ever going to show me _ your _ mark, pretty boy? Where’s it hidden?”

It doesn’t escape Éponine’s notice, how Enjolras seems to close himself off at her words as he mumbles, “It’s not important.”

She doesn’t believe that for a second. She _ knows _ he doesn’t believe that himself for a second. “I’m going to guess it’s on your dick. That’s why you don’t want me to see it.”

He gives her a look, an odd combination of exasperation and affection as he deadpans, “Yes, Éponine. I have a soulmate mark on my penis.”

Éponine laughs and scoots closer to him, laying her head on his shoulder as she wraps her blanket tighter around herself. “But for real, though,” she says, a little more seriously as she gazes out at the kaleidoscope of lights emanating from the city and feels the slight weight of his head against hers. “Do you know them? Your soulmate? I mean, obviously you know them, otherwise you probably wouldn’t have it. The mark, I mean. But do you _ know _ them, know them?”

Enjolras falls quiet for a bit and it frustrates her that he isn’t saying anything, how he _ never _ says anything. She holds her breath, waits for him to come up with an answer, the Tupperware of cookies in his lap lying ignored.

“Yeah,” he answers finally. His voice is so soft, it borders on inaudible. “Yeah, I’d like to think so.”

* * *

One day Éponine is over at Cosette and Marius’ place, because she’s realised that she’s subconsciously distanced herself from them ever since the day her and Cosette’s relationship ended and she wants to make amends. Marius is at work and Cosette has the day off, so Éponine sits there in the living room with her, being served tea and making small talk with the blonde. Talking about everything and nothing all at once. It’s a start, at least. Baby steps.

It’s a cozy place, homey, lived-in. Potted plants lining the windows, soft throw pillows placed across the sofa, framed photographs arranged on the wall, dozens upon dozens of books stacked up on the kitchen counter, on the coffee table, in empty chairs. Éponine longs for this kind of thing one day.

Before she could stop herself, she catches herself saying, “You know, sometimes I think about what we could have been.”

She regrets it the moment the words are out of her mouth and Cosette’s face falls for the fraction of a second before her blue eyes retain their light. “Éponine, I—”

“It’s fine,” Éponine interjects, giving her a tight smile. “I’m over it. Really. It’s been years, anyway. But sometimes I think about it.”

Cosette sighs, a little contrite, a little doleful. “I think…” She trails off, biting her lip and staring off into space.

Éponine raises her eyebrows. “You think what?”

Cosette looks back up at her, wary. “Promise you won’t get mad?”

Éponine smiles again, still a little too forced. “I won’t. I’ve had almost four years to get over it. I’ll be fine, I swear.”

“Well, I think…” Cosette takes a deep breath. “I think that even if we _ were _ soulmates, we wouldn’t have worked out in the end.” She laughs a little, nervously. “We were just kids, Éponine. Barely out of high school. We were _ terrible _ at communication and way too dependent on each other, and honestly, looking back on it now, I’m surprised we lasted two months together, let alone six. We bottled everything up. I think we were more focused on suppressing the problem instead of actually finding a way to solve it.”

She reaches for Éponine’s hand and gives it a squeeze. Just a friendly gesture, nothing more. She squeezes Cosette’s hand back. “I loved you, more than anything, but we needed to find a balance, and your soulmate—whoever they’ll turn out being—will help you with that.”

“Marius does that for you?” Éponine asks.

Cosette smiles. “Yes, he does.”

Éponine smiles back, the first genuine smile she’s smiled since arriving at the Pontmercy-Fauchelevent residence earlier that morning. “Well, then, I’m happy for you.”

Cosette laughs softly and cradles Éponine’s face, leans up to kiss her forehead. “You’ll find your soulmate. Everything will make sense then. You’ll see.”

* * *

When Éponine was little, her mother, before she was rendered cold and harsh by her failing relationship, her mother used to tell her and her siblings stories. Fables. Fairy tales. Callous kings and evil queens and ingénues with their talking animals and poisoned apples. Brave knights battling fierce dragons to reach their sleeping princesses in kingdoms far, far away. The fair folk with wings woven from moonlight and butterflies for a crown. It used to help her go to sleep at night, when thunder rattled the apartment and lightning cast ferocious shadows across the walls.

She’s long since grown out of that phase, obviously. She knows now that fairy tales are just the stuff of dreams and dusty books left forgotten under her bed. But she often remembers how she used to long with all of her being for her life to be more like the ones in the stories. She imagined things would have been a hell of a lot easier then.

But sometimes, when she walks into the living room and sees Grantaire and Jehan lounging around on the old hole-punctured sofa with Grantaire’s head in Jehan’s lap, and Grantaire is messing around with a fidget cube as he listens to Jehan reading aloud from a collection of Romantic poetry, she thinks that this—_this _ is better than the fairy tales her mother used to read to her. Because this is real. It’s messy and it’s hard and it can be a little too much some days, but it’s _ real_.

* * *

Éponine doesn’t know if she’ll ever find her soulmate. She knows they’re out there somewhere, very likely to be well within reaching distance, but at this point it no longer matters to her. Because she thinks she likes it when Enjolras’ bright eyes crinkle at the corners whenever he smiles at something she says that he thinks is funny. She thinks she likes it when they go people-watching in Central Park and think up increasingly whimsical stories about the passersby’s lives. She thinks she likes it when they spend late nights out on her fire escape eating snickerdoodles and sharing a bottle of dessert wine as they gaze out at the blinding city lights and they gradually grow closer together until she’s got her head resting on his shoulder and he has an arm loose around her torso.

And she thinks, if Cosette is made of stardust, then Enjolras is the stuff of galaxies, of exploding stars, of the Big Bang that whisked them into existence and brought about the beginning of time. He just—is.

* * *

“Hey, Gabriel?” They’re on the sofa and he’s got his head resting in her lap as he reads over his notes in an attempt to study for his upcoming finals, legs dangling over the armrest, and Éponine plays with his hair, running her fingers through his golden curls. It’s late at night, but Combeferre and Courfeyrac are out on a date at the moment, so Enjolras has taken advantage of having the whole place to himself for a few hours and invited Éponine over.

“Yeah, ’Ponine.” His voice is slow, his accent a little thicker than usual. She thinks she can remember him saying one time that people playing with his hair has a tendency to make him sleepy.

So she cards her fingers through his curls, tugging just enough so he’ll wake, and whispers, “I like that you exist at the same time I exist.”

“Mm.” Enjolras lays the notebook down on his chest and looks up to meet her gaze, smiling softly, and she thinks there are constellations in his blue eyes. “I like that you exist at the same time I exist too.”

* * *

She ends up kissing him first—which isn’t surprising in the slightest once she figures out it always had to be her.

He’s just graduated from law school and she’s among the people in attendance, along with the rest of their friends and his parents, the latter having flown in from Georgia to be present. They’re at the bar of the Plaza Hotel, where his parents are staying, for celebratory drinks, but Enjolras hasn’t taken a single sip of anything, wondering where Éponine is—she’s seemingly disappeared after his graduation ceremony, but the others have repeatedly assured him that she’s there for the impromptu celebrations. Maybe she’s just outside.

So Enjolras wanders out of the bar and wanders the hotel lobby in search of Éponine, knowing that if she’d gone outside, she wouldn’t have gone _ that _ far. And besides, she’s shot him a text earlier telling him to wait up for her, that she needs to tell him something. So he waits in a secluded part of the hotel lobby, knowing she’ll likely seek him out in the most isolated part of the room.

That’s when he hears footsteps headed in his direction and turns around to see Éponine running towards him, in her red dress and fishnet stockings tucked into those leather cowboy boots he bought for her back in Texas a couple of years back, and he lets loose a relieved breath.

“Éponine, my God, where _ were _ you, I’ve been looking all over for y—”

She shoves him, this woman a good six inches shorter than him, against the marble wall, stands on tiptoe and kisses him hard on the mouth. He’s stunned into silence for a few moments at first, but he soon realises that what the hell, this is _ Éponine Thénardier _ kissing him and he’s not about to let it pass without participating.

So he closes his eyes, wraps his arms around her and pulls her close, feeling her arms snake around his neck and her fingers tangle in his hair as he brings one hand up to her neck to bring her closer, brushing against the spot where her mark is. Her mouth is warm, somehow soft and rough at the same time, like a magnetic force drawing him towards her, and he wants so much of her, always, that he isn’t quite sure whether it’s killing him or keeping him alive.

Éponine was the first to initiate the kiss so she’s the first to break it, pulling away and meeting his gaze with a playful sparkle in her warm brown eyes. “Thank God you’re better at that than I thought you’d be,” she teases softly, a smile playing at her lips. He chases her mouth with his, absent-minded, but her teeth dig into his lower lip in retribution.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Enjolras murmurs in response because he has to say something before he kisses her again, which is all he wants to do right now.

In between kisses, Éponine asks, “So how pissed do you think your parents would be if you ditched your own graduation sort-of party?” But he knows what she’s going to do even without him having to answer the question, so he lets her grab his hand and drag them out of the hotel until they’re in his car and driving further away, the Plaza Hotel fading out of view.

“So where do you want to go?” Enjolras asks as Éponine tugs off her boots and swings her fishnet stocking-clad feet up onto the dash, sweeping her hair up into a ponytail. He smiles over at her, fights back the urge to reprimand her about where her feet should be.

Éponine grins back at him. “Anywhere,” she tells him. “It’s a big world out there, pretty boy.”

* * *

They end up back at his place, because if his parents _ are _ going to be angry at him for ditching, then there’s no need to dig himself deeper by actually leaving the city and potentially invoking the wrath of the devil himself. She’s on his bed and he can’t seem to stop himself from touching her everywhere. He kisses her nose, the mark on her neck, her collarbone, her stomach—anything and everything his hands and mouth can reach. It’s addicting, the sensation of running his fingers all over her warm skin.

And she only notices it after the high, when he lets her do with him as he’d done with her, taking in his body, fingers curiously brushing bare skin, and her hands find the mark just above his hip. Her breath catches in her throat.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Éponine asks, tracing her finger over the little orb, the sun and moon seamlessly melded together, etched into his fair skin. It looks exactly like hers.

“Because I didn’t want it to change what you thought of me.” She looks up at Enjolras’ candid words, so simple, plainspoken. So utterly _ sincere_. Her brown eyes find his blue. “And I thought that if you were ever going to fall in love with me, I wanted it to be on your own terms. Not because you felt like you were supposed to.”

Éponine’s quiet for a few moments, and Enjolras listens to the sound of her breathing as he waits patiently for her next words. She pulls herself up beside him so they’d be lying face to face once again, asking tentatively, “How long have you known?”

“Since that night I drove you home, after you got caught out in the rain,” he answers. “I saw your mark, and it looked exactly like mine. So I knew. It had always been you.”

Éponine sits bolt upright, swings one leg over Enjolras to straddle his hips. Her lips are pressed together into a tight line and he can’t tell if she’s angry or not. “You _ knew_? Are you fucking kidding me? You knew this _whole damn time_?”

He nods and she groans, exasperated, affectionate, a little delirious from it all, laughing as she lets her head fall on his chest and his fingers find their way into her hair. “This whole time. The whole fucking time. Through—through everything. Marius and Cosette, and everyone else finding their soulmates. And—_oh_. Poor Michael. You _ knew_.”

“Yes.”

“God, that must’ve fucking _ sucked_.”

“Yeah,” Enjolras laughs quietly then. “A little bit.”

Éponine rolls off of him and snuggles up beside him, laying her head on his chest and feeling how his heartbeat accelerates beneath her, and her stomach does a little backflip at the thought of how it’s _ her _ that has this effect on him. After a few moments, she looks up at him and rests her chin on his sternum as she gazes into his eyes, and it’s a little pointy but he doesn’t want her to move from him so he doesn’t say anything about it.

“So. You and me, huh?” Éponine says, grinning at him. “Well, I guess we were always inevitable.”

“I guess so,” Enjolras agrees, stroking her hair as he gazes at her with a fond smile.

“Think you can handle being stuck with me for forever, pretty boy?”

“I’ve managed it for the past five and a half years. I think I can handle the rest of our lives, yeah.”

“You sure you’re not upset that I’m the one you ended up being stuck with?”

“I don’t think there’s anyone else I’d rather spend forever with.”

“Good to know.”

* * *

This is how it goes:

It’s the next summer and he’s driven them down to his little hometown in rural Georgia, just twelve miles or so from Atlanta. His parents welcome them with open arms, spoil them rotten, let them stay with them in their big country house with the wrap-around porch. They go on long drives, sometimes with her behind the wheel, other times with him taking over, adventuring through the city. He takes her to all his old haunts and shows her around the place where he grew up, recalling his childhood summer days spent drinking peach iced tea and scraping his knees from falling off the tire swing dangling from a tree in his parents’ yard. At night they’d lie side by side on the carpet of his childhood bedroom, listening to his father’s old vinyl records.

They’re out stargazing on the porch one night, long after his parents have gone to bed, the two of them sitting on the railing with his back against one of the posts as she leans back against his chest with his arms wrapped around her waist. It’s a clear night, an extraordinary night, the moon hanging low in the sky with millions of stars scattered across the heavens as the summer night breeze gently blows past them and the cicadas sing their summer song in the distance. She’s never seen a night sky like this before, since they don’t get so much as one star in the city, let alone entire constellations, but even with how utterly beautiful it all is, when she looks back up at him, the tender smile he gives her and the twinkle in his blue eyes makes even the stars look dull.

She sighs, so completely content, over the moon. She loves him, and he loves her. Simple as that, but it’s enough. It’s more than enough.

The universe makes a lot of mistakes, but sometimes, Éponine thinks, sometimes the universe gets it right.

**Author's Note:**

> hi!! if you're reading this, thank you so much for reading to the end!!! hmu over [@bisexual-eponine](https://bisexual-eponine.tumblr.com/) on tumblr


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